Chicago: Women suspected of having breast cancer now have more reasons to be diagnosed with a needle biopsy instead of a traditional open surgical biopsy. Besides avoiding the risks and discomfort of an open surgical procedure, ...

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have found that recovery from an emerging, minimally invasive surgical technique called Laparo-Endoscopic Single-Site Surgery (LESS) was less painful ...

(Medical Xpress)—Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC is the first and only hospital in western Pennsylvania to offer radioactive seed localization, an innovation allowing breast tumors that cannot be felt to be precisely located ...

University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center is one of five institutions nationwide performing a novel scarless procedure that restores swallowing function in some patients with achalasia, a rare condition where the esophagus ...

(HealthDay)—Intentionally leaving the pressure-regulating balloon in place during a non-infected artificial urinary sphincter (AUS) revision procedure is safe and is not associated with infection or complications, according ...

A surgical team closes an abdominal incision, successfully completing a difficult operation. Weeks later, the patient comes into the ER complaining of abdominal pain and an X-ray reveals that one of the forceps used in the ...

A study by researchers at Stanford University Medical Center has found that a popular weight-loss operation is safer and reduces hospital bills when done with minimally invasive techniques rather than open surgery, which ...

(AP) -- After 15 years of wearing a mask and living as a recluse, a 37-year-old Virginia man disfigured in a gun accident got a new face, nose, teeth and jaw in what University of Maryland physicians say is the most extensive ...

Until relatively recently, most colon and rectal surgeries, whether elective or unplanned, required a large abdominal incision to achieve. This would typically result in a moderate degree of postoperative discomfort, and ...

Cutting

Cutting is the separation of a physical object, or a portion of a physical object, into two portions, through the application of an acutely directed force. An implement commonly used for cutting is the knife or in medical cases the scalpel. However, any sufficiently sharp object is capable of cutting if it has a hardness sufficiently larger than the object being cut, and if it is applied with sufficient force. Cutting also describes the action of a saw which removes material in the process of cutting.

Cutting is a compressive and shearing phenomenon, and occurs only when the total stress generated by the cutting implement exceeds the ultimate strength of the material of the object being cut. The simplest applicable equation is stress = force/area: The stress generated by a cutting implement is directly proportional to the force with which it is applied, and inversely proportional to the area of contact. Hence, the smaller the area (i.e., the sharper the cutting implement), the less force is needed to cut something.